One way Ikea researchers get around this is by taking a firsthand look themselves. The company frequently does home visits and—in a practice that blends research with reality TV—will even send an anthropologist to live in a volunteer’s abode. Ikea recently put up cameras in people’s homes in Stockholm, Milan, New York, and Shenzhen, China, to better understand how people use their sofas. What did they learn? “They do all kinds of things except sitting and watching TV,” Ydholm says. The Ikea sleuths found that in Shenzhen, most of the subjects sat on the floor using the sofas as a backrest. “I can tell you seriously we for sure have not designed our sofas according to people sitting on the floor and using a sofa like that,” says Ydholm.

Aside from the TERRIBLE turns of phrase (one should never use the term ‘meatballs out’ to describe the Indian market. INDIA.) this is a great article that speaks to many of Steph’s interests, primarily capitalism and regional difference.

Steph laughed her way through this entire article: Karl Ove Knausgaard Is The World’s Worst Travel Writer. Steph loves travel writing, but hates many travel writers because they’re usually white people exploring exotic locations and learning about themselves on a backdrop of brown people. Good times. This is like everything that’s terrible about travel writing, but a non-North American travelling around North America, and so great. So funny.

Are there Black people in Australia, by Natasha Guantai at Overland. Great piece looking at blackness and immigration and assumptions and Australia, with some great conversations in the comments (and also some terrible ones, of course).

Great whites don’t only rely on their sight for tracking prey. Like all sharks, they have special receptor pores under their noses (ampullae of Lorenzini) that detect the extremely tiny electric fields surrounding all living creatures.

SHARKPERFECTION

Chinese Feminists have been in detention for 2 weeks, and not charged with any crimes, and basically being detained because they’re prominent feminists, and it is NOT ON. Two good articles: At China Law & Policy; at Foreign Policy.

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6 thoughts on “linkspam of the nation”

han2013

Loved this link spam right up until you recommended Guantai’s article. That article and manufactured controversy has already been published in Overland at least twice now. Guantai seems to be b literally the only person having this argument. Over it.

Oh! I literally hadn’t read the Guantai article before! I don’t think they’re not-valid points, but am interested in your thoughts because I feel like the Roxane Gay thing was very polarising. Like, there were many people who got rightly (me included, and we actually have another WHY USACENTRIC WHY post brewing here at No Award because of it) upset/annoyed, and then a whole lot of people who called it an overreaction, and I didn’t see very many people say ‘oh hey, here I am’. So for me it was interesting, and I’m gonna look into why it’s getting republished around now, because Overland doesn’t seem like the sort of venue to publish something twice!

In response to han2013, the “manufactured controversy” began when I came across a remark by Celeste Liddle describing colour as an “old-fashioned” marker of Blackness. I tweeted that there are some Black people in Australia for whom colour – and visual appearance more generally – remains the main marker of Blackness. I also pointed to myself as such a person.

Celeste Liddle, without asking me about my identity or personal background, wrote an essay in which she attacked me as ignorant and compared me to Andrew Bolt. She clearly assumed that I was either myself a migrant to Australia, or the child of migrants.

In fact I am not ignorant, about race, or Australia, or race in Australia. I was born in Australia. I was raised and schooled in Australia. I was an (adult) friend of Lisa Bellear when Celeste Liddle was still a schoolgirl.

I am not surprised that most people are “over me”. Because the number of non-migrant African diaspora people in Australia is very small, most Australians are not aware of us. Which is why I thought to tweet in the first place.

Unfortunately it is hard for me to be “over” the experiences that have racialised me as Black in Australia, given that I have lived them and continue to live them every day.

And when I am attacked by someone who doesn’t know me, or my history, or my experiences, and hasn’t even bothered to ask, I defend myself. Just because no one else cares that I am here does not mean that I am likewise going to pretend that I am not.

My essay in Overland notes that Roxane Gay apologised. It’s unfair to say that she apologised and I didn’t, though. She is not being asked to forfeit her racial identity – she is American, so Australians have no problem with her being Black. There are some Australians of African descent who are saying that they will no longer call themselves Black out of solidarity with Indigenous Australians. Although I am being called upon to do this myself, due to my specific circumstances (not having an overseas/migrant community that recognises my racial/cultural identity), I’m not in a position to do so without causing harm to myself and being intellectually dishonest. (Also, to clarify: these people, who are no longer calling themselves Black, are not to be confused with brown skinned people of African descent who do not identify as Black due to their racialisation in Black majority countries or other personal circumstances.)

My essay also explains why Roxane Gay’s question could be read as belonging to an exclusionary narrative of Blackness (ie Black = African diaspora). But personally I will not accept a narrative that is exclusionary in the other direction (ie Black Australia excludes African diaspora). Because that is a narrative that means I am not here. It is treating the racist aspiration of White Australia – into which I was born – as if it were a reality. I argue for an inclusive narrative in which we are all here, in our diversity, and that is not something to be apologetic about.